Momilies

Not sure what it was about this week, but I seemed to bump into memories at every turn.  I was overly stressed at work (that will pick up again on Tuesday after the holiday), and sleeping but dreaming vividly, which means I’ve not had good rest.  And some of the memories made me a little weepy.  Not that they were sad or anything, but they made connections in my mind to different times, and different people that had been in my life over the years.

Of course, as I’ve passed the halfway point of my life, memories pop up regularly anyway.  I will see something, someone will say something, and off my mind goes, remembering something or other.  It started on Sunday, when my calendar reminded me of a dear friend’s birthday.  She’s been gone from this plane for more than 6 years, and I still miss her terribly.  Her “symbol” was the dragon-fly, and on Sunday evening, a very persistent dragon-fly was buzzing around me as I did yard work.  How could I not think of her on that day?

On Tuesday, I was contacted by a former student, out of the blue.  I hadn’t thought about or talked to this student in more than 10 years.  It was great to hear from her.  She is working an important job, something I never knew she was interested in.  I only know the shy little girl she was when I knew her.  All of my former students have a special place in my heart.  They are sort of my children, too.  I love to hear about their successes and achievements.  It makes me feel proud.  I always hope I had some sort of a positive influence on them and their growing into the people they are today.  To hear back from them and know that they are succeeding is reinforcement of that.

And yesterday in the paper was an opinion piece about finding a substitute for an expensive fix.  Of course, I’m always looking for the cheap way out, so the piece resonated with me.  The guy was talking about buying cord to fix some item or other that had broken, finding that cord purchased in the windows/blinds department at the big box hardware store was three times as expensive as finding the same cord to be purchased by the foot in a different part of the store.  It had me recalling a fix I’d done to my first washing machine.  I’d purchased an ancient Maytag at a yard sale for $35.  At some point, the belt that drove the tub snapped.  After all, the washer was a 1942 model.  Things are bound to go wrong, right?  I walked to the appliance repair place around the corner, and the helpful salesman offered me a new belt.  For $100.  Plus tax.  I took the broken belt next door to the auto parts store, and the helpful salesman there found a belt of the right size, which I purchased for under $10. This happened 30 years ago.

Thirty!  How did I get so old?

Today, I’m going back to my roots, which will include more memories.  I’m canning tomatoes and jelly.  Not canning peaches, although in my childhood, we canned a lot of peaches.  We also canned tomatoes, green beans, and made pickles.  I won’t be going that far – I find I like frozen green beans better, and I don’t have time to brine for pickles.  Maybe next year.  Or not.

But all the same, the memories will be flowing!

Oh, summer.  You’re such a tease!  All the fresh fruit, the fresh veggies.  I want to eat them all, right at once.  Which of course is silly, but soooooo tempting.  So I have to make sure I’m not just eating some of the wonderful things, but putting some of the wonderful things away for the winter months, when the “fresh” fruits and veggies don’t really taste all that great.  Last week I shared with you my peach jam and peach cobbler.  This week, I thought I’d talk about Raspberry Syrup.  It’s easier than you think to do!  And in January, when you’re fixing waffles on a snowy Sunday morning, you’ll have a wonderful taste of summer to drizzle on top.

(Sorry for the terrible pictures, the kitchen was pretty hot and my camera was having trouble focusing)

This is an easy recipe, but does take some watching, so do this when you have time to hang out in the kitchen.  I suggest a decent novel, or maybe working on several cooking projects at once.  When you cook this, you don’t want to walk away.  Watch for raspberries to go on sale, and then buy a bunch.  They regularly go on sale here for $1 or less for a 6 oz. carton.  Pick cartons that are stuffed, so you get the most for you buck.  8 6 oz. containers will make about a quart of syrup, give or take.  I usually preserve it in 4-oz. containers, because it will turn to sugar if open too long after you open the jars.  A 4 oz. container is enough for my family to have on waffles for one meal, with only a little leftover.  I sometimes use the leftover syrup on a bowl of oatmeal, or mixed in with a couple tablespoons of cream cheese on a bagel.  Yummo!

A Definition: syrup is different than a jam.  Usually there is less sugar, and the goal is a clear slightly-thickened juice, not a jelly.  But like making jelly or jam, you need a big pot, a big spoon, and some patience.

So, dig out that big pot.  It needs to be deep, because this will boil up and make a mess if you have a pot that is too small.  And there’s nothing messier to clean up than boiled/burned sugar on your stovetop!  Pick any leaves or debris out of the raspberries and toss them in the pot.  Do NOT wash them.  They are clean enough for this, and washing raspberries makes them absorb liquid and deteriorate.  You want all that flavor in your syrup!  Add about a cup of white sugar, and about a cup and a half of water.  Turn the burner on and bring to a boil.  You can use a lid to speed the boil process, but once it reaches a boil, you want to remove the lid, and start stirring every once in a while.  You’ll also want to turn the heat down to about medium.

Allow this to cook for at about 30 minutes, stirring frequently.  The goal is to cook this down by half.  You will need to stir more the longer it cooks, to keep it from sticking.  You will know it is pretty much ready when it is sticking even with the stirring.  At that point, get it off the heat and let it cool for ten or fifteen minutes, so it is easier to handle.  Hot sugary things can burn you in nothing flat. The foam you see on the picture to the left?  That was mostly gone by the time the syrup was fully cooked.  It will get strained out when you move to the next step, however, so don’t fret over it too much.

Now you have two ways to go with this.  You can strain the raspberry mixture through a strainer to remove the seeds and pulp, or you can tie cheesecloth over a bowl and pour in the raspberry mixture, letting it sit overnight to strain all the way through.  With a strainer, the juice will be a little cloudier, which I don’t think is a problem, but some people want their syrup clear.  This is your choice. 

To preserve, you can freeze in small jars, or fill 4 oz. jars with syrup, leaving about a half inch of head space, and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes (low altitude) or 15 minutes (high altitude).  Store in a cool, dry place until use.

Enjoy on those waffles, pancakes, biscuits, fresh bread, etc. come winter.  I promise it will make you smile!

(Some may note that I am putting my syrup in quart jars.  This is because mine goes into the freezer when I make it, to be canned later when the temps are cooler and therefore canning in the kitchen isn’t an awful proposition.)

In Colorado, peach season comes in August.  Back in Missouri, peaches are ready in June.  But I have to say, our peaches here in Colorado are amazing – I dare say better than any southern peach.  They are huge – as big as my fist – juicy, naturally super-sweet, and soft and velvety to eat.  Colorado’s peaches come from the western slope (we live on the eastern side of the Rockies) from a place called Palisade.  Palisade peaches are a wonder.  My favorite way to eat them is to peel, pit, and slice into a bowl, sprinkle on a little powdered sugar, and drizzle with cream.  I don’t have the words to describe how good this is.

Palisade peach season lasts for about three weeks, so if you’re like me, you watch for sales and buy up pounds and pounds of them and you make jam, cobblers, and slice them up for immediate eating.  This past week I made a huge pot of jam, plus one cobbler for dessert.  I may repeat that this coming week, before they are gone.

I’m sharing today my recipe for peach jam, as well as peach cobbler.  Both are tested and work well.  There are differences because we are at altitude – mainly the cooking time for the jam is much longer as our boil point is lower than sea level boiling point.  I did not need to make any adjustments to the cobbler recipe.  Let’s talk about that jam…

First, you need to peel a bunch of peaches.  Make sure they are ripe.  Don’t use green or hard peaches.  You can quick-ripen peaches over a few days if you put them in a paper bag in a warm place.  Plan carefully, so you’ll have what you need to make your jam.  The recipe is scalable.  Peel them, pit them, and cut them into chunks.  The smaller the chunks, the finer the texture of the jam.  I tend to do larger chunks, 3/4 inch to 1 inch, but that does mean a chunky jam.  Place all of the chunks in a large glass or stainless bowl.

Next, add in the lemon juice and sugar.  Stir to be sure all of the peaches have sugar on them.  You can also add spices at this point – nutmeg or cinnamon – but I leave mine plain.  I love the taste of the peaches and don’t need any extra flavor.  Your kitchen will already smell amazing just from the sweet smell of the peaches.  Once the sugar is mixed in, put a damp towel over the bowl and go do something else for an hour.  The idea is for the peaches to macerate in the sugar.  “Macerate” is a fancy word for the chemical reaction that happens when fresh fruit is put with sugar – the fruit starts to leach out its juice.  This might be a good time to throw together a batch of bread in your bread machine, or mix up a loaf of beer bread.  You’re going to want to taste this jam when you are done – you know, for quality control purposes.

So, you’ve run a load of laundry or pulled some weeds in the garden or read a couple of chapters of your book, and you come back to the kitchen to find your peaches looking awesome.  There is a lot of juice in the bowl.  Go ahead and put that peach mixture in a big pot.  And I mean BIG.  I use my stainless steel stock pot, and the peach mixture doesn’t even take up a quarter of the pot.  This is about the ratio you’re looking for, because once this is boiling, it is going to expand greatly.  Anything that expands above 2/3 of the pot is going to get you in trouble, so think really, really big.  This of course depends on how many peaches you use (see recipe for details).  Turn on the heat and bring this to a boil.  You can put a lid on the pot, to speed up the time, but definitely keep an eye on it so it doesn’t boil over.

See that foam?  That’s a good sign.  Keep those peaches boiling.  Stir them frequently, checking for scorching.  If they are sticking on the bottom, you want to turn the heat down a bit and stir more frequently.  Hopefully you’ve got that book handy…get comfortable next to the stove and just let that pot boil.  It is going to take at least a half-hour to get even close to gel stage, which is your goal.  In my high altitude environment (we are at 5,000 feet before sea level), this took almost 90 minutes.  Gel stage is tricky to figure out if you’ve never done it before, but I promise you can do this.  There are three ways to check for gel stage. The first way – if you have a candy thermometer, you are trying to reach 220 degrees F.  Even though your pot is boiling madly, you may be surprised that you are not even at 212 (boiling point).  That’s because sugar boils at a much lower temperature than water, and what you have there is a giant pot of sugar.  Think about how sweet things heat up super-fast in the microwave.  It’s the same thing.  The second way – the spoon test.  Use a cold spoon (not the one you are stirring with and dip it into the boiling mixture, then lift it up, turning it so that you see the back of the spoon and see if the juice runs off in several drips, or in a single fat drip or a sheet.  You want that sheet or fat drip.  The third way – drop a quarter-sized amount of juice onto a saucer and put it into the freezer for one minute.  Take it out and play with that juice with your finger.  If it is stiff, sticky, and feels like soft jelly, then you are good to go.

Remove the pot from the heat if you are using an electric stove.  Skim off any foam, although I usually don’t have any on mine.  Place jam in half-pint jars leaving 1/2 inch head space.  Process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes (low altitude) or 15 minutes (high altitude).  Store in the dark.  Mine went into quart jars and into the freezer, because August in Colorado is hot as Satan’s bedroom, and canning is usually put off until the fall.  Mine will be canned in September or early October.

Enjoy!

The Boulder County Fair was last week.  It is held at the fairgrounds in Longmont, and is about as far away from the elite snobbery in Boulder as is possible while staying in the same county.  This is the third year I’ve gone to the fair, and it has become a bit of a tradition.  Just as I never miss the parade that kicks it off in downtown Longmont, I never miss the fair.  There are the usual things – live animals, carnival rides and games, an exhibit hall full of handcrafts and prize-winning veggies, and a few cowboys and cowgirls.  Evening events include several rodeo events, a demolition derby, and barrel racing.  In the morning there is a chuck wagon breakfast, and lots of judging of live animals.

It was hot the day we went – over 90 – with nothing but sunshine.  That meant we were looking for shade wherever we could find it!  We drank lemonade, ate ribbon fries and pulled pork, kept our fingers out of the rabbit and chicken cages, and marveled at giant zucchini, incredible photographs, and the best cake ever – it looked like a campfire.  It was a great way to spend a few hours, even on a hot day when we might have instead wanted to be indoors.

Just another reason I love my town – it gets all rural on a pretty regular basis.

Random bovines.

Bunnies.  Most of them were for sale.

One of many colorful fowl.  There were also ducks and several varieties of turkeys.

Sheep and goats.

Lunch – ribbon fries, pulled pork “Elvis Style,” and Cowboy Beans

Tater playing in the “hamster ball.”

Handwork in the exhibit hall.

S’Mores Cake.

Preserves and pickles.

Storyteller.

There are things I read sometimes, or see sometimes, that just bring me to my knees emotionally. I know everyone has their things, and maybe others would not react the way I do.  And that is fine.  We all have our things, our neuroses, our issues.  But I have to think there are a lot of women out there that would react the same way I did, to what I saw the other day.

There are a series of books called “PostSecret.”  I first saw them about 7 or so years ago, at a bookstore.  A big group of friends (me included) used to meet every other week in the cafe of a Barnes and Noble.  We’d talk about anything and everything, and there would be books we’d find in the store and discuss, and many times buy.  One particular Wednesday, someone found the first two volumes of PostSecret, and we read them, mostly in silence, with giggles, and often with tears.  We all left that night feeling a profound sense of connection to the rest of the world.

PostSecrets contain photos of mailed-in or graffiti secret feelings people have submitted.  Sometimes, the statements are poignant – about losing a loved one or remember a time when.  But most of the time, these are deep secrets, sometimes dark secrets.  Things you would not say out loud, or to another person.  The statements are anonymous, and therefore, the ability to say them is “safe.”  Some of the most difficult things to speak about are those we cannot share.  So I will warn you, if you decide to pick up one of the books, or check out the website, prepare yourself.  It will be emotional, sometimes painful, sometimes funny, but definitely yanking at your emotions.  I have read my own truths in their pages, more than once.

What brought on this post today was the following PostSecret from last week.

I read this, and felt like I’d been punched in the gut.  There are so many feelings associated with this statement that I can’t even begin to articulate them all.  But I think what stood out the most was that the thing men fear the most is that a woman might be fat?

Like all these men that fear this are some sort of physical perfection themselves?  They are all built like Fabio and have the face of Brad Pitt?  They have no flaws – no crooked noses, no zits, no misshapen feet, no fat anywhere on their bodies?  This makes me so angry.  While men are looking for that woman in the very narrow 5% band of available women that are absolutely perfect (according to the media), while they themselves are probably not even close to the same standard themselves?  What a crock.

Fat?  That’s the WORST thing they could come up with?

So disappointing.  So deflating.  What chance does any woman have, when that is the attitude?  I swear, if women could figure out how to procreate without men, we’d probably do it, to heck with men’s misogynistic crap.

I know I wax poetic about my somewhat rural town here in Colorado.  Every year about this time, actually, I share some pictures from the Boulder County Fair Parade.  You would think “Boulder” would mean some upscale, yuppified event, but Longmont, where I live, is not Boulder.  It happens to be in Boulder County, on the far eastern edge of Boulder County.  The Boulder County Fairgrounds are in our town.  Boulder just happens to be one city in our county. And as some people like to point out, it is not Boulder, it is “The People’s Republic of Boulder.”

Longmont is decidedly rural, old-town, surrounded by family farms and miles and miles of open prairie before the mountains rise to the west.  Agricultural ditches lace through open fields like enormous spiderwebs, feeding snow-melt to crops and cows.  Classic red barns and while clapboard farm houses dot the landscape.  In town of course, there is a bit more civilization – all of the big box stores you could want or need.  But tucked into the middle of town is a farm store (Murdoch’s), and many homes in the old-town parts of the city boast wonderful, productive vegetable gardens, and well-used clotheslines.

Yesterday, Tater and I headed out on our bikes for a 10-block ride to downtown for the annual Boulder County Fair parade.  I knew we’re going to see antique cars, giant tractors and harvesters, dancers, goats, horses, and marching bands.  Because we value our lives, we bike through a series of allies until we can’t anymore and have to ride on the street.  The first alley we ride through features a row of the back yards of a series of post-war houses.  Some have dogs, some have gardens and dogs, some have chickens.  And in one yard, the clothesline was filled with someone’s drawers.  In a big city, with big-city sensibilities, you’d never see such a thing. But here? Drawers go on the line, right there with sheets, shirts, jeans, socks, and towels.  Yes, even the towels.

I am not graced with a clothesline at our rental homestead.  But I do have some wonderful vegetable gardens that are producing plenty for us to eat.  Well, except for the tomatoes, that aren’t ripe yet as we head into the last weeks of summer.  But there is squash, beans, eggplant, cucumbers, herbs, and lettuces.  I’m growing Zinnias by the back door, to remind me that not all gardening has to be about vegetables, and as a throw-back to the beautiful roses farm wives used to grow by their back porches.  Water was precious on the prairie, so those roses were watered with dishwater – nothing would go to waste.  And the drawers would be on the clothesline, with all the rest of the clothes.

This week, Klown, Tater and I will visit the fair itself.  I’ll look at all the chickens, ducks, turkeys, and ginea fowl, and wander through the goat barn and the cattle barn.  We may buy tickets for the Mexican Rodeo, and for the Demolition Derby.  We’ll watch the music and dance performances on the main stage, and I’ll spend an hour in the exhibit building looking at quilts, decorated cakes, monster home-grown veggies, fiber-work, and artwork.  We’ll eat hot dogs and fried spiral potato chips and funnel cakes, chasing it all down with a frozen lemonade.  The fair will be dusty, hot, smelly, and in all ways perfect.

And as ever, I will be thankful for the wonderful rural little city I live in.  It fits my sensibilities just fine.  Even if I have no clothesline to hang my drawers on.

Some pictures from the parade:

I am most definitely a morning person.  As I write this, it is not quite 7 a.m., and I’m just starting on my coffee.  I’ve been up for two hours already – time spent starting laundry, reading email, watering the garden, putting away the clean dishes in the dishwasher, playing with the cat, and any number of other things that need to be done but only take five minutes.  I saw another gorgeous sunrise full of oranges and pinks that bloomed into a golden morning.  The grass is thick with dew but drying quickly as the sun gets higher on the horizon.  A few minutes before seven, my laptop and I hop in the car to head to my favorite coffee place, where I meet a friend to write for a couple of hours.  But first, I notice the little spider web “tents” all over the yard, highlighted by dew, and find the most spectacular spiderweb under the apple tree.  I must take a picture.  Then I head the 10 blocks or so to downtown, on quiet streets where the lights are all still on flashing yellow. Two enormous hot air balloons drift silently through the sky overhead, and every bird is singing.

Chris, the barista at the coffee shop, starts my caramel latte when I walk in the door of the coffee shop.  He’s handing it to me by the time I reach the counter.  He’s used to me.  And it is obvious to me that he is also a morning person.

I know a vast majority of the world would rather not see a sunrise.  But me?  I’m glad I’m awake to see them.  There is nothing like the feel, smell, and sound of a new day.  Everything is new.  Every possibility exists.  The world is still quiet (except for the birds) and there’s still time to fix anything that you didn’t fix the day before.  Every morning, I’m filled with ambition and a reasonably short to-do list.  I’m ready to tackle another day.

I have always been a morning person.  I get it from my dad.  No matter how late I would stay up, I would still wake at the crack of dawn.  My mother tells of me waking up in the morning as a baby, and standing in my crib and just singing away.  That is still my attitude most mornings, although real life and real days do eventually intrude and sometimes mess up what starts out great.

But still, I wouldn’t trade my morning personality for a night personality.  As a sun-lover I can’t really enjoy night-time hours.  Give me that daytime.  That new, that clean, that fresh start.  That, to me, is living.

I read a lot of real estate ads.  I like to look at what’s out there, and see all the pretty pictures of houses dolled up for sale.  Sometimes I look at houses in my price range, and sometimes I look at those ridiculously out of it.  I’ve learned what some of the buzzwords mean – “cozy” often means the house is unbearably small, “newer” can mean anything from two to fifteen years, “potential” means it needs a lot of work.

And “open concept” means a house where the main part of it is basically one gigantic room.

That open concept idea has been around for the last 20 years or so, and many people think it is a great idea.  I do not.  In fact, I prefer “openness” to refer to the back yard.  An open concept house means that the living room or family room, dining room, and kitchen are one big space with very little between them.  Messes in the kitchen are visible to anyone watching television or eating dinner, and the couch often smells like bacon and garlic.  Anything put out decoratively in any of the rooms will quickly become covered with an ugly fuzzy greasy veneer that is hard to clean.  The carpeting in these areas, especially if it is laid in the dining room (and I’ve even seen carpeted kitchens – I can’t imagine the horror of that!), will be desperately stained and virtually uncleanable.  Yes, it means that people in the living room or dining room can interact with whoever is working in the kitchen, or the kitchen itself can be a gathering area.  But for a cook like me, this is pretty much a bad thing.

When I am cooking, I’m concentrating.  I have things to cut up (that don’t include my finger tips), things to monitor on the stove for boiling over (like the gravy), need to be able to move freely between stove and sink and refrigerator, and I don’t need people in the way or people talking to me.  In other words, I take my cooking seriously.  So far, every house I’ve rented has been “open concept.”  And personally, if I ended up buying a house that was “open concept,” I’d probably be looking for a way to add a wall or two.  In my “dream house,” the kitchen is big and there may be areas for seating and sharing, but generally, I’m building a kitchen for cooking.  Professional cast-iron stove, triple ovens, commercial refrigerator and freezer, an indoor grill and a huge cast-iron griddle.  Counter space for everything, cupboards to store everything, and skylights for natural light.  A small atrium where I can grow herbs and some veggies in winter.  The dining room will be separate.  So will the living room or family room.  The kitchen will be a thing unto itself.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with separate space for separate purposes.  I wouldn’t want to have the kitchen and my sewing room together.  The mess would be awful and my sewing equipment would be ruined.  If I had my computer at a desk in the kitchen, I’d be cleaning grease off the screen on a daily basis.  And who would want a kitchen in their bedroom?  Cooking is messy.  It is better to keep it contained.

I can still entertain quite well with the kitchen in its own space.  I don’t want to hang out in my messy, hot kitchen once I’m done cooking.  I want to relax with everyone else out on the patio or in the living room.

What do you think of open concept houses?  Yay or nay?

Four years ago this past week, we packed everything we still owned after our big yard sale and giveaway, and moved to Colorado.  Tater and the Perfect Child, cats, plants, my antique dresser, and a grumpy Klown.  Even four years later, I still remember how tense those last few weeks were as we made tough decisions about what was to come with us, and what needed to be left behind.  I was more on edge than I’ve ever been in my life.  I worried a lot about where we were going to end up, since we’d had to rent a duplex sight-unseen.  There was some savings, but we didn’t want to have to spend it in stop-gap housing when we arrived.  And I worried about things that might not survive the trip.  Both of the cats were in my car, and they were more than happy to sing me the song of their people the entire 1000 mile trip.  I worried about the Perfect Child, who’d had her license for less than two weeks, now driving one of our cars, following me on the highway as if she were a trailer to my car.

We were facing so many unknowns.  I had a job, but it was only temporary.  I had to believe I could turn it into a permanent job.  We had no health insurance, no fall-back plan in case things didn’t work out.  This was an all-or-nothing proposition.

And when I say “we,” it was really just me.  As the financial pillar for our family, everything was falling onto my shoulders.  When I was laid off, it was devastating.  My first thought had been, “what about my retirement?”  I had been paying faithfully into the plan, and was due to retire in ten years.  That was now gone.  My second thought had been, “what about health insurance?”  Having a child with expensive medication needs leaves you scared about how you’re going to pay for it.  The last thing I thought of is, “how am I going to find a job?”  Being 50, female, working in a specialized field, and in the middle of a recession, I felt my odds were pretty slim.

But it did all work out.  That first duplex was livable, if not great, and within two months I had turned my temporary job into a permanent job.  Klown had found work, as had the Perfect Child.  Tater was happily enrolled in a new school, and we had health insurance again.  And I was paying into a retirement plan again.  It will take me longer to get to retirement, but I didn’t lose my previous retirement – it just will not be as big as it was originally going to be.  In the end, everything worked out.

Doesn’t it somehow always do that, despite our worries, and stresses?  And I still live in the most beautiful place on the planet.  I wouldn’t change a thing.

This year, the Fourth of July seemed to sneak up on me.  I had been talking for weeks about getting up to the park in Longmont to listen to the Fourth of July concert, and then finding a good place at dusk to watch the fireworks.  But the week before was nearly unbearably busy – both at home and at work.  With the release of my first novel, much of my free time has been taken up with promotional activities, while I try to write novel number two.  The gardens are at the point of needing more attention than I have to give – hot dry weather means I need to water more often, and the heat-loving weeds have continued to overrun my pretty vegetables despite the heavy mulching.  Klown has been sick since Tuesday, which means even less support with housekeeping and additional messes to clean up.

And work is full of “change,” with people leaving, new people coming on board, and a general feeling of not being able to keep up with the current and projected workload for the next two months.  There are also a handful of proposals and user manuals to write, and this writing saps my energy when I’d love to be working on my novel instead.

So when Friday came around and I realized the 4th was the next day, I suddenly felt like I’d made no plans!  Which I hadn’t!

But Tater and I pulled it together.  We made ourselves a picnic lunch – sandwiches, baby carrots and jicama, a bag of strawberries and blueberries, and some patriotic red-and-white sugar cookies from the grocery store.  We strapped our lawn chairs onto our backs, filled our cargo basket with our yummies, and biked the twelve blocks or so to the park.  We found a shady spot and settled in.

And my goodness it was hot.  In my over fifty years of 4th of Julys, there have only been two kinds of weather – hot and humid, or hot with giant thunderstorms.  This day was no different.  Colorado’s thunderstorms this time of year are mostly dry – little puffballs of angry thunderheads float overhead, rumbling with tremendous thunder, but no rain reaches the ground.  Those little thunderheads serve a purpose, though.  They block out the relentless sun for a minute or two, and produce breezes that help cool us down, if only for a few minutes.

The concert was wonderful.  It started with a guy and his band singing some classic rock, and was followed by a chorus that sang patriotic tunes like American the Beautiful.  Then the Longmont Symphony Orchestra played for 90 minutes, covering all the best tunes.  They always wrap up the show with the playing of the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky, complete with real cannon fire.  In between these things were activities for the kids, the awarding of prizes for the best-decorated pavilions, and a little interlude where children got to conduct the orchestra while it played John Philips Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever.

Then we biked home.  The sun was hot, the shade was limited, and by the time we got there, all we wanted to do was stand under a running hose in the back yard.  We opted for showers and a nap instead, though, because there was more to come!

At 8:30, we headed to the Fairgrounds for the annual fireworks show.  We live in the biggest small town in America, I think.  Population 91,000, but our entertainment is still very small-town.  I swear at least half of the 91,000 people were gathering around the Fairgounds for the show.  And it did not disappoint.  Tater and I sat in our lawn chairs behind the car and oohed and ahhed with all the families that were gathered.  When the finale came, the crowd had reached such a frenzy that the last “boom” brought long minutes of applause.

I love my city-that-is-really-a-small-town, and all the fun we can have.  Even if it is hot.  Next year, I’m going to try to not let the Fourth of July sneak up on me.